Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to supporters at a Liberal Party fundraiser in Aurora, Ont., July 20, 2018.Chris Young / The Canadian Press

News stories showed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau surfing off the beaches of Tofino last week. Meanwhile, people are wondering whether they have jobs going forward as we all watch Canada-U.S. relations deteriorate.

We can’t be reminded enough that the United States is our largest trading partner. Canada depends on the U.S. market for the consumption of a full 75% of our exports. Conversely the U.S. export trade to Canada is 16 to 18% – not as large a percentage but an enormous volume given the size of the U.S. marketplace. It is an incredible relationship that has served us both well, but which is essential for Canada.

Mounting tariffs – on both sides – are devastating for small and medium-sized businesses. One member of the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses of Ontario emailed me to let me know that the tariffs will add 25% in additional costs to the products they are trying to sell. In other words, it will kill their export business.

Businesses in Ontario that export to the U.S. already deal with electricity rates three times those of their U.S. competitors, compounded by minimum wage increases and other costs that flowed from Kathleen Wynne’s government small-business-killing taxation. Tariffs are the final nail in the coffin.

What does this mean? Well this is anecdotal, but in a recent meeting of our Coalition with the Ontario government, two companies advised they were cancelling plans for Ontario expansion and instead moving to Ohio. This is heartbreaking. With them go Ontario jobs and a future for our province.

And yet, the federal government seems determined to let it slip away.

Canadians are suffering while the PM shows off his surfing form on Tofino Beach.

If I was the Prime Minister this is what I would do…

1. Find someone who would relate to President Donald Trump. They say in sales that people buy from people – the personal connection matters. After more than 20 years in sales, I have learned people buy from people they like. When you boil it down, a trade deal is a sale and in order to get a deal down you need to send in a team of people who will know how to get along with the Americans. There were early signs the PM got this when he had Brian Mulroney in the loop but that seems to have gone by the wayside. This needs to change. The Europeans showed they can make it happen.

2. Forget the virtue signalling and get down to an economic deal. The Canadian government completely misplayed its hand when it went into NAFTA with a list of social justice and environmental issues that had absolutely no place in this deal. It would be like me trying to strike a deal with one of my U.S. customers — but first demanding they demonstrate gender equity on their board and prove to me their recycling programs are robust. These things are overreach — they have little or nothing to do with the economic deal. And they only serve to irritate the very people with whom we are trying to do the deal.

3. Act domestically to show we care about fair competition. The U.S understands that, if you have jobs, you have citizens who can contribute more to build a stronger economy and a stronger society, so you need to create the conditions for more jobs. That means lower taxes, less regulation, less government interference in the economy. The Government of Canada seems intent on higher taxes, more regulation and more government interference. The Wynne government in Ontario had the same approach and Ontarians just tossed it out. Wynne insider Gerald Butts – now principal secretary to the PM – has hopefully noticed this and can work to change course in Ottawa. A change would be noticed by Washington and would help achieve a deal.

We are just starting to see the pain of a trade war. We can’t win it — the U.S. is bigger and stronger and matters more to us than we do to them.

Confronting America might win some domestic political points in the next election but it will hurt our country’s future. Trudeau was elected on the promise of helping the middle class, not hurting it — and his trade agenda is hurting it right now.

Time is running out to fix this. Here’s hoping Ottawa can get to it.

Jocelyn Bamford is founder Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses of Ontario.

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